Quote:
Originally Posted by left of center
They are happy to sit on it and keep potential competitors from getting their hands on it and providing potential competition for Jam Production's existing venues. The city really does need to force them to either shit or get off the pot... the longer the Uptown sits, the more expensive and unlikely the eventual rehabbing will be.
My thoughts exactly. We have so much historic, underutilized infrastructure just sitting there. More competition in the venue space market is going to doom a lot of these old movie palaces and dance halls.
|
Jam will never sell the Uptown unless forced. Here's the thing, and I've said this several times before, venues don't compete with bigger or smaller venues, they compete in rough "classes" of occupancy. 200-500 person rooms, 1000 person rooms, 2500 person rooms. 5000 person rooms and on up to Arena sizes. You might have some overlap where maybe an act that could sell out a 5000 person venue will play down to a 2000 person venue like Chicago Theater to get premium ticket pricing for playing and "intimate venue", but the Rivera at 2500 people isn't regularly competing for acts that would play the Congress or Aragon. Just look at Jam's previous portfolio of venues: Aragon at 5000, Rivera at 2500, Vic at 1200, Park West at 900. They don't own two venues of the same class except maybe Park West and Vic which have a lot more demand because they are smaller rooms. For this reason ain't nobody ever fixing the Uptown unless the government pays for it. The Chicago venue market is already saturated. Live Nation is just going to use these venues for outdoor amphitheater like shows, I highly doubt they will build a purpose built indoor room of 2000 or 5000 people. They already have the Aragon and several other venues and don't need to cannibalize demand. However there's virtually unlimited demand for outdoor theater spaces in the short summer months so I can see them going for the soccer stadium or other spaces. This of course raises the question of how much outdoor space this will actually have and how much will be essentially ground leases to corporate interests like the stadium or outdoor venues.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JK47
The Uptown Theatre really isn't helped by having an owner (Jam Productions) who also owns another nearby theater (Riviera) and is in no hurry to do anything about the state of the Uptown. They seem perfectly content to just let the theater rot...unless someone else were to pay to have it restored (at which point they'd happily book acts there).
|
Jam only bought the Uptown because, back when they had a 30 year lease on Aragon, Live Nation was going to buy Uptown and create a competing 5000 capacity venue. Jam pulled their political strings and got the Live Nation deal killed and sold to them instead as the "local heros". Of course they never actually planned to repair and reopen the venue, they were planning to mothball it to keep their competition out. Now their lease ended at Aragon and Live Nation bought it. Jam consists of two old guys and I don't see them trying to create a new 5000 capacity venue at their age especially when they still have the Chicago Theater and Auditorium to book at by renting them for the night for their bigger acts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KWillChicago
Has Jam ever flirted the idea of selling? How much would a full renovation cost?
|
$40 million+
Congress was $25 million and I'm sure that's only ballooned since I saw it.
Prev
Linear Mode
